Computer applications provide information to a user. The type of information one application provides often differs from the type of information a second application provides. However, the information provided by one of the applications often relates to the information provided by the other application. For example, regarding a single transaction, one application returns transactional data, such as the name of a seller, while a second application returns analytical data, such as reports and graphs, pertaining to the transaction.
Applications often provide information to a user via a web page. Many applications dynamically generate a collection of data and an arrangement of the data to be presented in the returned web page. The dynamic generation of the collection of data and the arrangement thereof is often performed in accordance with particular parameters input to the applications with or as the request for data. It is often desirable to provide in the returned page of one of the applications a link to another application that is to provide data related to the data of the returned page. The related data is to be provided in response to a data request that includes the parameters according to which the returned page was generated. To request the related page, it is necessary to pass to the second application the parameters by which the page of the first application was generated. However, the types of parameters recognized by each of a number of applications often varies. If when the user links to the second application from the page returned by the first application, the second application does not recognize the parameters passed to it, then the second application cannot return the requested data.
An example of applications that accept different kinds of parameters is where applications return data in accordance with parameters that are based on objects of SAP's Object Based Navigation (OBN). OBN provides for the instantiation of business objects. For a particular OBN, an application is configured to alternatively provide various types of information and representations of information depending on a user role. For example, with respect to the same transaction, a sales representative and a sales manager may require different types of information. Therefore, in response to a user request, if the user is a sales representative, the application will provide the user with one type of information. In response to the same request, if the user is a sales manager, the application will provide the user with a different type of information. The applications receive requests with parameters including an identifier of an object type and an OBN instance. The particular object that is instantiated can depend on the user role. Similarly, where two applications provide different types of information, as discussed above, the two applications may instantiate different OBN objects and may utilize different parameter types and parameter languages. Another example of applications that accept different kinds of parameters is where one application is an OBN based application and a second application is a non-OBN based application. Accordingly, the second application cannot provide data where the parameters passed to the second application are identifications of an OBN object type and an OBN object instance.
If a user selects a link from a page returned by the first application to a page to be dynamically generated by the second application, the OBN business object based parameters of the first application are passed to the second application. However, it may occur that the second application cannot read the parameters passed to it. In this instance, the second application is unable to generate the requested page including information related to the data provided in the page returned by the first application.
Accordingly, there is a need for system and method for enabling the linking from a page of one application to a page of a second application, where the two applications do not accept the same parameters for determining the data to be returned, and a page request transmitted during the linking includes parameters according to which the page of the first application was generated.